Eight-year-old Diana Pinera of Lemon Grove smiled when she
peeked inside her lunch bag and found fresh carrot sticks, a red apple, graham crackers, milk and a peanut butter and jelly pie. Her mother, Alma Moreno, smiled too because the lunch she picked up at the Lemon Grove Recreation Center was free.

“The saving is important,” said Moreno, who heard about the federal summer food program for children from low-income areas at her daughter's school.

From Oceanside to San Ysidro, schools, nonprofits' park and recreation centers and others are distributing healthy lunches for those 18 years and under this summer at nearly 160 sites. Statewide, free summer meals are being provided at nearly 2,900 locations.

“This is one more means of ensuring that the youth in our community are fed,” said Anthony Millican, spokesman for the Chula Vista Elementary School District, where the district is serving lunches at six sites from June 15 to July 24.

The meals are paid for by the federal Summer Food Service and the Seamless Summer Feeding Option programs, which have been around for several years. The state receives funding based on the number of meals served. Last year, California received $21 million, said Ronna Jakobitz, manager of the state's Summer Food Service Program.

The distribution sites are in neighborhoods where more than 50 percent of the children are eligible to receive free or reduced meals during the regular school year. However, any child can receive a free meal because there is no paperwork required.

“It's open to the community,” said Virginia Carter, the Escondido Union School District's nutrition department director.

California's top education official said he wants to see more children eating free summer meals.

“It's critical that communities work together to ensure access to these important meals and snacks this summer because so many districts have been forced to cancel their summer sessions, which often provide meals to hungry students as well as other children in the community,” State Superintendent of Public Education Jack O'Connell said in a prepared statement last week.

More than half of California's K-12 population — about 3.1 million students — received free or reduced priced meals at their schools in the fall of 2007 and spring of 2008, state officials said. But only 541,000 children participated in the free meal programs last summer, they said.

Officials said it's critical that children have access to well-balanced meals throughout the year so they don't get sick and are able to concentrate and perform well when they are in school. Participating school districts and organizations are sending press releases to news media outlets, e-mails to homes and distributing fliers at community centers to publicize the summer meal program.

In East County, free meals are being distributed in El Cajon, Lakeside, La Mesa, Spring Valley, Santee and Campo. In North County, they're available in in Vista, Escondido, Oceanside, Borrego Springs, San Marcos, Santa Ysabel, Palomar Mountain, Carlsbad, Ramona and Fallbrook. In South County, the distribution sites are in Chula Vista, National City and San Ysidro. San Diego Unified, the largest district in the county, is distributing meals at dozens of sites.

In Lemon Grove, cafeteria workers at Lemon Grove Middle School pack lunches for hundreds of children beginning at 5 a.m. The free meal program runs from June 29 to July 31.

“Fresh cut sandwiches!” said Trieste Hewitt, the district's nutrition services production manager. “It's such a great deal. They get fresh fruit every day, fresh vegetables.”